The Reverend Joan Cooper Burnett

Clergy Biography

The Reverend Joan Cooper Burnett is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, and serves as Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Middletown, Connecticut and Protestant Chaplain at Wesleyan University. She is the founder, President and CEO of G-GIRLS, Inc. a faith-based non-profit corporation formed to foster healthy development and enrich the lives of teen girls and women.

Rev. Burnett has served in numerous capacities of ministerial leadership as a lay and ordained minister, including Chaplain at Connecticut Baptist Homes, Inc., an assisted living facility for the elderly, former Pastor of the Black Church at Yale, a Christian inter-denominational Church at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and as Pastoral Associate intern at Yale New Haven Hospital. She has preached and presented workshops in various churches locally and nationally.

Rev. Burnett is the former President and Founder of PathWays International, an executive recruiting and human resources consulting firm and Strategies to Employ People (STEP), Inc. a job placement and training firm that partnered with faith-based organizations to support the employment and training of at-risk youth and young adults. After managing and operating the two business enterprises, she launched in 1994 and 1999 respectively, Rev. Burnett suspended her entrepreneurial ventures in September of 2001, to answer a call of God to ministry. Rev. Burnett enrolled as a full-time student at Yale Divinity School where she earned a Master’s of Divinity degree in May of 2004, and was honored with the Charles S. Mersick Prize for effective public address, especially in preaching.

Rev. Burnett serves on the Executive Committee for the Ministers Council of Connecticut, the Congregational Leadership Renewal Committee, and the Board of Managers for the American Baptist Churches of Connecticut, the Middletown Clergy Association and the Middletown Ministerial Alliance. She is a member of the Board of Directors for The Children’s Home of Cromwell, St. Vincent de Paul Place, and Judah House. Rev. Burnett most recently was voted as a member of the Yale Divinity School Alumni Board and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Rev. Burnett holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, a Masters of Education in Human Resource Education from Boston University Graduate School, and a Bachelors of Science degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin.

Profile in the Wesleyan Connection.

Office of Religious & Spiritual Life
169 High Street, Room 207
(860) 685-2275
jburnett@wesleyan.edu

Office Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 11:00 AM-5:00 PM and by appointment.